Degree Type

Creative Component

Semester of Graduation

Spring 2019

Department

Greenlee School of Journalism and Communication

First Major Professor

Andrew King

Degree(s)

Master of Science (MS)

Major(s)

Human Computer Interaction

Abstract

Conventional web design tends to see tabular data as providing a barrier to creative graphic design. This project explores how such data can be displayed in a more abstract visual format, free from tables and the need to navigate through layers of information. The creative component reported here is the result of a personal exploration based on curriculum taught by the author in an undergraduate interdisciplinary course that merged perspectives from the fields advertising, graphic design and computer science to create personalized data-driven applications. Of particular interest to this project was determining if there are limits to the design elements that can be controlled by live data in a web page displaying weather information.

Seven data sources, connected to via application programming interfaces (APIs), were used to bring in 16 location-specific data points relating to weather, population, and geolocation. Literal text-based content displays used some of the data points, while others were used to control various visual elements (e.g., backgrounds, weather condition representations, and animation speeds). The result was a single visual web page displaying current conditions and forecasts using limited text, dynamically applied images, and Cascading Style Sheet (CSS) animations, all of which required minimal user intervention.

Comments

Live creative component located at: http://createteach.com/weather/

Archived page located at: https://web.archive.org/web/20190416235820/http://createteach.com/weather/

Copyright Owner

Berghefer, Sherry

File Format

PDF

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